New German dramatic art - Playing time 2011/2012

5 morgen (i.e. 5 Tomorrows )

An explosion in the city centre, white powder trickles down to earth and covers people’s bodies. A virus? A terrorist attack? The apocalypse? August, a failed husband and unsuccessful writer, takes refuge in his hometown, where he meets the student Missy, who confronts him with his life-lies. Paul, an IT expert schooled in disaster films, barricades himself in his house, and refuses even his wife Loretta entry for fear of contagion. August’s ex-wife, Julia, a sober doctor, faces the surrounding panic with analytical expertise and professional empathy. In three exemplary couples, 5 morgen examines what happens when a disaster no longer occurs in some distant part of the world or flickers across the screen in a blockbuster, but actually takes place here and the fight for survival begins. In contrast to the illusion machine of Hollywood, the x factor here evokes not catharsis, but rather brings the narcissism of the characters to a head.

Comments on the play:

For Fritz Kater, writing means not only the development of new methods of ordering and processing verbal material, but also always a special kind of compression, an intensification of his own perception of reality. 5 morgen, his new text, describes a world in which the dogma of efficiency dominates not only the markets but also the image of man with its winner anthropology. That this idea does not necessarily produce winners, but results in the possible destruction of the species, he treats as a tragic-comic (future?) vision. […] Kater’s play […] takes place in a time when everything is awash and blurred. […] 5 people on 5 tomorrows. On one these the emergency alert will be sounded in a city. An explosion? Atomic contamination? Dangerous virus? “Society burnout”? No one knows anything for certain. We can’t easily take this side or that side. Neither an outside nor an internal enemy can be blamed for the disaster. The desperate characters, who have lost faith in the present reality, do not even try to find a foothold, truth, hope or consolation in mutually exclusive ideologies or worldviews. They develop no conspiracy theories and seek no culprits. It is the collapse of the Now.